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Title: Homeland Security's Data Vacuum Cleaner In Action An Investigation by the Identity Project
Source:
UnSecure Flight
URL Source: http://www.unsecureflight.com/vacuum.html
Published: Sep 23, 2007
Author: UnSecure Flight
Post Date: 2007-09-23 13:39:35 by Zipporah
Keywords: None
Views: 88
Comments: 4
An Investigation by the Identity Project For years, DHS ran a secret travel surveillance program called the Automated Targeting System. This data mining program came to light earlier this year when DHS announced plans to openly monitor the international comings and goings of Americans with a legal version of the scheme called the Automated Passenger Information System, or APIS. APIS, which is now fully operational, places requirements for government-issued travel credentials on all Americans as well as individualized, explicit, prior, per-flight permission to travel ("clearance") by DHS on every American citizen wishing to leave or enter the United States. In conducting APIS, DHS pulls in huge amounts of data on every passenger. Secure Flight will put these same requirements on all Americans for domestic travel. Under Secure Flight, an American wishing to fly within the United States will need permission from DHS for each segment of his travels. The main source of information DHS uses to determine whether to grant an American permission to travel by air comes from their flight reservation, or PNR. The PNR contains a wealth of deeply personal information, as this report will soon show. For DHS to argue that the APIS foreign travel surveillance program and the Secure Flight domestic travel surveillance program are separate and distinct is a fiction, if not an outright falsehood. They are but two bottling plants drawing water from the same spring. When word first leaked of the existence of the hitherto secret ATS program, the identity Project filed a series of Privacy Act records requests on behalf of US citizens who had traveled overseas. DHS eventually turned-over almost one hundred pages of documents in response to the requests. The documents received consist of the travel dossiers compiled by DHS on five American citizens, including PNRs and border inspection records. 1. DHS is maintaining records of the books individual Americans read, as shown in this DHS Customs and Border Protection document: 2. DHS keeps track of the race of American travelers, as this secondary inspection record shows: 3. DHS keeps records of where US citizens state they have traveled, their profession, and with whom they have associated: 4. The individual travel reservation (PNR) data information is pulled in its entirety by DHS rather than filtered and then pushed by the airlines. This means that a tremendous amount of highly personal information is vacuumed-up by the US government, analyzed, and stored. While DHS' Transportation Security Administration (TSA) states that flight records will be destroyed within days of the completion of travel, they say they will store the travel details of 'suspected terrorists' for decades. TSA defines all Americans as 'suspects', and will therefore never destroy any travel data collected. The sensitive information contained in an individual PNR vacuumed-up by DHS includes the telephone numbers of both the American and the number given to the airlines while abroad for contact if the flight is cancelled (here a family member living in Tokyo): ...the record locators of others with whom they travel: ...who their travel agent is: ...and the initials of the individual agent: Even the different possibilities the travel agent explored before choosing the best route for the American traveler are in the PNR and are stored by DHS: DHS also collects and stores flight details on travel having nothing to do with US international travel. In this example, an American traveled from Berlin to Prague and then onward to London: By keeping tabs on what individual citizens read and with whom they associate, the Department of Homeland Security is collecting data on the free exercise of 1st Amendment activities in direct violation of the Privacy Act 1974. The Department of Homeland Security is violating the fundamental right to travel, a right elemental to the free exercise of so many other rights, by requiring American citizens to get permission from DHS in order to leave or enter the United States, or to travel by air within the United States. The documents obtained by the Identity Project most likely are but the tip of the iceberg when analyzing the degree of invasiveness perpetrated by DHS on an unsuspecting American public. Congressional action is urgently needed to investigate and defund all DHS surveillance programs that create this creation of records on "suspected terrorists" - meaning you - that violate the inalienable right of all Americans to travel freely, without governmental interference. >> Download the Report (532 KB PDF)
Homeland Security's Data Vacuum Cleaner In Action
I. ATS, APIS, Secure Flight: Different Bottles, Same Water
A. The Bottles
B. The Water
II. The Identity Project Investigation
A. Findings
III. Conclusions
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#1. To: Zipporah (#0)
Aug 10, 2007 By John M. Doyle/Aviation Daily The Transportation Security Administration is issuing its latest plans to implement the long-delayed Secure Flight computerized passenger pre-screening program. The TSA yesterday announced a notice of proposed rule making (NPRM) to take over from air carriers the responsibility for matching passenger names against federal terrorist watch lists. Secure Flight and its predecessor, the second version of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening program, known as CAPPS II, have been in the works for more than four years, bogged down with technology and privacy concerns. The TSA said it plans to begin operational testing of Secure Flight this fall before it publishes a final rule in the Federal Register (DAILY, Aug. 6). Initially, TSA will use passenger data - name, itinerary, date of birth and gender -- supplied voluntarily by air carriers. At a Dept. of Homeland Security news conference at Washington National Airport officials emphasized that in its new version, Secure Flight will not use commercial data, assign risk scores to individuals or predict behavior. The TSA also announced its final rule for collecting passenger manifest data from arriving and departing international flights. The Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) Pre-departure final rule will require carriers to submit passenger data, such as name, date of birth, travel document information and citizenship, at least 30 minutes before a flight departs -- up to the time that the aircraft doors are secured. The aim is to give U.S. authorities more time to check the names against the watch list and avoid having to divert flights. "It is curious that on the same day the department is issuing the final rule for international prescreening, it issues its long-awaited plans for Secure Flight," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. Thompson said he hoped DHS would integrate the two programs. DHS said it planned to do just that. The result, according to the department, will be one system "responsible for prescreening all aviation passengers." The announcement comes a year after British authorities broke up an alleged plot to blow up U.S.-bound transatlantic flights with liquid explosives. "This represents one of the most significant overhauls of data exchange requirements since Sept. 11, 2001," said a spokesman for IATA. "This complete overhaul of the current system will likely affect airlines and passengers around the world. We look forward to reviewing the complex APIS final rule and Secure Flight NPRM in the days and weeks ahead and providing comments to the government," said the IATA spokesman, Steve Lott. It's all true and the StateInc keeps records on all domestic travellers as well as foreign.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Domestic as well.. ?
Yeppers. But we ain't supposed to know.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition And more than just travelers too - they keep records on everyone that they can period. Maintaining privacy in these days is extremely difficult. BUT we have to keep in mind that EVERYTHING they learn about us is information which WE have provided them. The real danger about the records they keep on people traveling is the "links" which they may WANT to create based upon an "association" which in reality isn't an association at all. For example, if you happened to be seated next to someone of "questionable ethnicity" there may be a chance that they deem you have an "association" with that person, and scrutinize you even more intensely. I don't think I'd even consider boarding a plane anymore. Hell, I couldn't if I wanted too - too much identification is required, and I simply don't qualify. Past that I'll be guarding my privacy by being very vigilant about any information I let out. If someone wants to know my address or phone number (even it it's on the census form) my answer will be "Objection - 4th Amendment" and they will get NO ANSWER. Think about all the information a person provides by simple everyday things such as getting driver's licenses or having the electricity turned on in the new house they move into... Whenever someone asks information give yourself this simple test - ask yourself "is this information something I would be willing to share with a stranger on the street?" If the answer is "no", then you should probably refrain from giving it to the party that's asking.
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name. TSA To Test Passenger Screening System This Fall
"There is no 'legitimate' Corporation by virtue of it's very legal definition and purpose."
-- IndieTx
#2. To: IndieTX (#1)
#3. To: Zipporah (#2)
(Edited)
"There is no 'legitimate' Corporation by virtue of it's very legal definition and purpose."
-- IndieTx
#4. To: IndieTX (#1)
It's all true and the StateInc keeps records on all domestic travellers as well as foreign.
Steven Wright
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